I always laugh whenever someone tries to defend the confederacy to me. The confederacy was a secessionist movement within the United States that tried to form their own nation built on the belief that human beings should be deemed “property.”

I don’t care if you had relatives who fought for the confederacy (they’re actually traitors by the way) or you think the flag “looks cool,” everything related to the confederacy is linked to racism. Not just racism, but the ownership of human beings – otherwise known as slavery.

McDaniel said, “We’re talking about an organization that our governor is a member of, that in the past that our senators have been members of, that many members of our House and Senate are members of. It’s not a racist organization. It’s a historical organization filled with reenactors and collectors. That’s all it is.”

What’s next, “Sons of the Nazis”? People flying flags with the swastika on the back of their trucks because it “looks cool”? Can you imagine that? Because while the movements were different, the beliefs both of these groups represented are reprehensible. They believed that a specific group of people were subhuman – able to be treated as slaves or slaughtered at will.

Some of you may have heard of McDaniel – he’s the one who said he wouldn’t pay taxes if they were raised to pay reparations for slavery and has frequently referred to Latino women as “mamacitas.” He also once complained that a female candidate for governor of Alabama only got on the ballot because of her “boobies.”

It’s just amazing how people continue to defend the rights of those who view favorably upon the confederacy. Even if you want to ignore the racial implications of what they represented (which wouldn’t make any sense because that was the basis for their existence), they were a group of people who were basically terrorists that opposed our Constitution and waged war against the United States government.

Not exactly a group of people who should be “honored.”

But here we have a Republican, and a tea party favorite, defending his participation with this racist group by supporting their racism, saying it’s all about “history.” But what is that history? It’s a movement of people driven by the belief that human beings should be owned and that our Constitution didn’t represent them. That a certain demographic of human beings should be treated like farm equipment rather than people.

Allen Clifton is a native Texan who now lives in the Austin area. He has a degree in Political Science from Sam Houston State University. Allen is a co-founder of Forward Progressives and creator of the popular Right Off A Cliff column and Facebook page. Be sure to follow Allen on Twitter and Facebook, and subscribe to his channel on YouTube as well.